EN: ATS, Chapter 8

**A/N: Word keeps screaming at me about something called a “long sentence”. I told Word to go have horribly bad sex with itself. Anyway, in this chapter we encounter the somewhat doddering, easily bored, “Pam would adore him” character of Niall.**

♦

Niall stood by and smiled infinitesimally at the blond brat suddenly wearing his king pants while the Ancient and the Elder posed effectively with carefully attentive indifference. A casual observer would have missed his brief expression, but Godric, naturally, did not.

The elder Fairy quickly controlled his features and wondered where the fuck Preston was.

Wouldn’t do to blow the cover too soon, now would it?

He had worked far too hard, meaning for more than eight minutes consecutively, to arrange this seemingly unnecessary meeting to risk blowing it all just because he was right…as he had known he would be.

Sookie may have thought she was being smooth and cool but no, he could read the beloved daughter of his heart like an open book.

Somehow during the years of filming and PR events, the thankfully powerful, mostly acceptable Viking had, indeed, caught her eye in a way that no one else had these past couple of centuries.

Originally her role in that True Nonsense fiasco had been trifold: to influence the asinine stuffed suits in power over the show (whose skulls had been too thick to allow her influence to permeate the matter decaying between their blocked ears), the writers (Sookie had felt terribly sorry for the writers, he remembered with chagrin – according to her the poor souls had been forced by contract to elaborate only on the drivel spewed at them from the dense fools on high, or rather high on something), and finally the actress herself, although that role had been more as an observer (and to keep her busy) than anything.

It had been a truly unexpected boon that his grandaughter and the show’s actress had resembled each rather closely – a boon should the Fairy ever have to impersonate a human actress impersonating a fairy, but Sookie’s mental influence over the human had been more than enough…which had, in a way, been a shame as she’d used her glamour to subtly alter the actress’ appearance to more closely mirror her own during the filming.

Ah, the things the younger kinfolk would do when bored…

She could also see out of the human’s eyes when needed, and judging by her fascination with The Northman, she’d looked quite more often than was strictly required.

Hence this ostensibly unnecessary trip… Such things we do for love… And to protect our loved ones…

Of course, Niall truly hadn’t been pleased with how Fairies had been depicted on the show.

Mobile wanna-be strip joints and gaudy dance halls? Really?

Orgasming when popping out a litter of babies like a badly-designed rapid-fire weapon?

Note to self: investigate this realm’s weaponry…

The mothers of his acquaintance had threatened many dire and vicious punishments for those Powers That…he couldn’t even mentally repeat the names and curses heaped upon those morons.

But at this late date such things were hardly worth mentioning.

Often.

By executive order and for precautionary reasons, re-runs of that show were now illegal in Fairy.

However, he had quite a few things he wished to discuss with his part-time friend, part-time enemy but full-time acquaintance Godric. That old coot was one of…ok, the only vampire he would bother trusting in any form or fashion.

Oh, alright, he had amended querulously, maybe The Northman, too.

Some.

Wisely he had kept his grumblings to himself during the upheaval known as The Packing and The Readying for The Trip. Sookie may have driven the staff, the family, and herself nearly mad with her preparations, but she also had one hell of a right-hand fireball. He should know – he’d been the one to teach her.

Sadly…well, except for how things were now looking, at any rate. That damn fire-ball his granddaughter wielded so efficiently might come in handy…

Subtle movements brought his focus back to the future lovers.

Ahhh…judging by The Northman’s split-second expression of pure shock and recognition suffused with the briefest of joy, he had not only noticed but remembered Sookie as well.

Niall preened justifiably. It had been his idea to have The Twit use Sookie’s name in those…”books”…as a tribute to his favored descendant. At the time, however, he hadn’t realized that The Moronic, Sanctimonious, Repulsive, Smug, Brainless Twit was going to have Sookie regress in character so abysmally. He should have let her keep the “heroine’s” original and vastly over-Southernized name: Charleeney.

No self-aggrandizing to see there, nope…

Long ago, well, during Earth Realm Time, he added to his mental prattle, when he had first heard that some two-bit hack was outlining a series of books where a back-woods hick got up close and personal with the supernatural world, he had taken it upon his bored self to investigate the situation.

Originally he had simply wanted to fuck with the human world a bit – his realm was boring, business was booming, and hell, where else did humans think some of the more outlandish crap they read like lemmings came from anyway?

However, once he saw the notes that the weird example of humanity had scribbled out (Really, how hard was it to write neatly? And why did she insist on using those too-thin, low-end diner napkins already smudged with indeterminable grease stains on them?) Niall became intrigued with the notion of having a bit of fun at vampire expense.

Not only were “the dead” the lowest creatures in all, ok, most realms – even dodgy shifters were easier to deal with for fuck’s sake – but they were so unwarrantedly obnoxious!

Arrogant!

And they were stronger and had far better sensory powers than fairies did, damn their perfect musculature and non-aging hides!

A plague upon the realms they were…well, most of them anyway…realms/vampires, either/or.

He had known that they were planning to reveal themselves to the humans in this realm with the badly polluted air, that they intended to stop lurking in the darkness, figuratively speaking of course since they still couldn’t be out and about in the daytime all picking up their dry cleaning and buying tomatoes.

For a brief moment he had felt rather badly for the mundane human population…then he realized that with the advent of Tru Blood…nah, the damn deaders would still be feasting on the mundanes and that he actually didn’t give a shit.

He only worried for the Fairy folks who were determined to live in the human realm. To vampires, they were the Ho Hos, Twinkies, and Tasty Cakes of the natural order. Thankfully he and those of his line were able to mute their scent.

If it weren’t for the inherent danger of this damn realm with its vampires and its iron and its fucking citrus, he wouldn’t have cared less if his people chose to spend their time making money and babies off humans. Hell, it kept them out of his hair!

Ah, well, given the nature of many of his kin, he knew he had to do something about the damn vampires. And what else was a good Fairy Prince to do than warn the unsuspecting human and fairy population about just how irrational, heartless, base, and uncouth the undead tended to be on an average night?

Did the humans a service with the William Compton bit, he thought with great satisfaction. Humans needed to be made aware of the more vulgar, boorish, side-burned manner of most vampires and that idiot Compton suited the bill, he chuckled to himself, perfectly – atrocious sideburns and all.

Somehow, though, between his influence and Sookie’s influence, somehow Eric the Northman had come out smelling of roses and the North Sea in both the books and the show. He could well imagine the fit Godric must have had when That Bilious Twit had imagined an insane rapist as Eric’s Maker…and what the hell was wrong with her in the first place that she thought it was all fine and dandy to curse Eric with a Maker like Appius?

Niall knew that Compton was bad enough running around drinking people and raping them and lying to them all over the place! He preened to himself that no, he had indeed not suggested to The Bubonic Twit that The Sideburned Skulker rape that poor girl in the trunk of that ugly car – draining her was by far enough insult without choosing to go overboard and adding additional unnecessary injury… Eric’s voice brought his wandering attention back to the business at hand. Even so, he did have to wonder if there would be any of that spaghetti he’d heard about.

“Sookie?”

Eric couldn’t deny the beautifully shocking evidence before his eyes. It truly was Sookie from the show, but she was somehow different…somehow more.  She was a little shorter, a little curvier in all the right places, her hair was a little longer and a little lighter in shade, but it was that faintly glowing light radiating off her silky skin that spoke most loudly of her otherness.

This was not the actress he’d known…

With more grace than he had ever seen from her during filming, she quickly drifted over to stand before him and placed her hands on his broad shoulders.

“Yes, it’s me, Eric…the real me,” she said with a smile.  Sookie then floated up to his face and placed a warm kiss on each cheek in greeting.  Her smile broadened when he clasped his hands firmly around her waist and held her close.

As his head dipped lower, she obligingly raised her own, and the Elder Fairy and the Ancient Vampire looked on as the future lovers exchanged their first true kiss.

King Richard d’Alsace, in all his tall, blond, broad-shouldered glory, whipped out his phone and grabbed a couple of pics.

♦

♦

♦

**A/N: I have no idea if The Twit was going to use a bastardized version of her own pen name for Sookie’s name, but would that REALLY have been too off-base for her?  Ok, so, what did you think?**

♦

♦

♦

♦

♦

♦

♦

♦

♦

♦